1995?
Pah
I won't even tell you when I bought my first Space Wolf...
Lol - fair enough. I do remember the 2nd edition Codex Space Wolves post Rogue Trader, that was when I painted my friend's Termie Wolf Guard sarge (and Dreadnaught as well) - brand new metal models and he let me loose on them!.
But I didn't buy any models until 1995, when I bought Ragnar and a Grey Hunters squad, which are busy being put togetehr with teh new close combat weapons and bolter arms...
I personally can't wait to see this codex, GW has ALWAYS had a significant amrine content to any edition - go back to 2nd ed, and there were books for (Ultra)marines, Angels of Death (Dark Angels Blood Angels) and Space Wolves.
This was out of a selection of the following armies - Eldar, Orks, Chaos, Imperial Guard, Nids, the 4 marine forces and Codex Sisters of Battle. That s agrand total of 40% of active army lists or 33% of codices if the DA and BA lists are treated as a single dex (which they were)
Now we have the following Codices/Lists potentially as seperate and distinct:
Space Marines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Black Templars, Space Wolves, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos Marines, Chaos Demons, Imperial Guard, Witch Hunters, Necrons, Tau, Tyranids, Orks, Demon Hunters.
Thats a population of 5 lists of Space Marines, out of 15 dexes = 33% - see the trend here?
Now by the year end, only Space Wolves and Space Marines out of the Marine dexes will have been udpated to 5th standard.
There are 5 3rd edition dexes that need to be updated (one of which is Space Wolves) and as long as these get redone imminently then I see very little reason for non-marine players to gripe. Space Marines tend to get the love, I agree, but as the first codex in any cycle, they generally get some of the hate as well...Codex Space Marines in 3rd edition was a woeful list comapred to some...
Of teh existing 4th edition lists, Demons is likely to not be redone, it was probably designed with 5th in mind anyway. Similar to Orks, which appeared less than 1 yr before 5th was released.
Dark Eldar have an updated list from 2003 (so "only" 6 years old - but still poor models for the range), so the oldest unadulterated Codex is Space Wolves (arguable that they benefit from Codex Space Marine changes as well, but still) which was printed in 2000 I recall. Thats a LONG time ago!